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- The struggle, the struggle!
The struggle, the struggle!
Part of Friends of the Dorothy Neal White Collection series
Tuesday 19 March 2024, 5:30pm to 7pm
Free. Koha from non-members appreciated.
As a young boy Arthur Ransome read the works of Robert Louis Stevenson with enthusiasm, and in his mid-20s he was commissioned to write a biography of Stevenson. What happened to that work? In this talk Kirsty Findlay explores how Arthur Ransome's 'Stevenson' was brought to publication one hundred years later than intended.
Discovering an abandoned manuscript
In May 1914 Arthur Ransome’s wife Ivy posted a parcel to Parr’s Bank in Regent Street, London, ‘to be delivered on demand to Arthur Ransome Esq or Mrs Arthur Ransome.’ The parcel contained Arthur Ransome’s initial work on a biography of Robert Louis Stephenson, but it was never collected by Ransome or his wife.
Dr Kirsty Findlay, author of Arthur Ransome’s long-lost study of Robert Louis Stevenson (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge Suffolk, 2011) will talk about the discovery of the manuscript and explore some of the reasons why it may have been abandoned.
The Dorothy Neal White Collection
The Dorothy Neal White Collection is a research collection of children’s books that were enjoyed by young New Zealanders before 1940. The Friends of the Dorothy Neal White Collection support the work of this, and other children’s literature collections held in the National Library of New Zealand.
Interested in finding out more about Children’s Literature collections in the National Library? Have a look at our Children’s Literature research guide.
Children's Literature research guide
About the speaker
Kirsty N Findlay, graduate of VUW and Cambridge, was a member of the English Department at VUW and the University of Waikato before eventually heading the Drama examiner team at Trinity College London. She mainly lives on a beck in Cumbria where she has planted New Zealand bush within sight of Arthur Ransome’s Kanchenjunga.
Kirsty N Findlay. Photograph supplied.